Solutions are required for the management of unwanted noise generated from gravity drain systems in buildings as the industry rapidly moves away from the standard heavy cast iron drain pipe systems to lighter weight plastic drain pipes. This move to plastic drain pipes has largely already occurred in the residential housing market and is now occurring in commercial buildings on an international scale.
The prior art relative to acoustic treatments for plastic drain pipe involve wraps which must be custom slit and taped in straight pipe runs and further require complicated cuts, gluing and taping at ‘T’, ‘Y’, straight union, etc. intersections. These solutions add significant weight to the building e.g. increasing the overall capital cost of the structure and require special skills/tradesmen and special taping and gluing materials to install. The efficacy of these systems over long periods of time is unpredictable as the taped/glued joints can fail forming gaps and subsequently defeating the acoustic performance of the system.
Prior art includes all current products that require: a higher level of trade skill at the job to install due to required custom slitting, gap sealing with expensive specialty tapes which lose efficacy over time as the tape fails. In one system, a special clip is required that does not affect a predicable seal around the foil covered fiber glass heavy plastic composite causing gapping and lose efficacy over time as the wrap gaps and fails. Examples of prior art include Netlag®, Soundlag® and Armawave® which address the acoustics problem however have the problems of being very expensive, exhibit higher installation costs, can be easily damaged during installation, and are very heavy.
One object of the present invention is to overcome the above identified problems in conjunction with conventional sound insulation systems.